Orbital Reef: Commercial space station by BlueOrigin, Sierra Space, Boeing

Re:Orbital Reef: Commercial space station by BlueOrigin, Sie... by panick21_ on Monday October 25, 2021 @03:15PM (#28991885)

Bigelow Aerospace is defunct. The patents from NASA have run out. Other people can build these structures if they want to.

Sierra Nevada has been involved in some research for these. I think they also did some thing for Bigelow as well.

I'm not a big fan of these inflatables. They are good for the in-between space, larger then the biggest rockets, smaller then a really built structure. I prefer us to actually figure out how to construct real structures in orbit.

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Re:Orbital Reef: Commercial space station by BlueOrigin, Sie... by PeterisP on Monday October 25, 2021 @05:20PM (#28993282)

IMHO the skill to construct real structures in orbit would necessarily come after forming a commercial/industrial space station (unlike ISS), not before it. You would need significant amount of equipment and people in orbit for the long term to work on that construction, so you need a sizeable station even if it's just "temporary construction crew quarters+warehouse".

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Re:Orbital Reef: Commercial space station by BlueOrigin, Sie... by panick21_ on Monday October 25, 2021 @05:32PM (#28993398)

And those parts I would suggest you might as well prebuild on the ground and launch them. With New Glenn you can launch 6.3m modules, with Starship almost 9m. That should be enough, no additional blowing up required.

From there you can then build real structures onto it.

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